blackboxme

I enjoy a JRPG from time to time, and I'd like to give a defense of the JRPG. To make my defense, I'll point to the PSP game FF7 Crisis Core, which I think shows that the JRPG is still fun in one form or another. JRPG simplicity You can only equip two types of items: materia and accessories. All told, there are about 8 slots to equip. At any given time, you can swap in a set of skills and stats to suit your play style in about 30 seconds and it's all easy to understand. There aren't any "skill trees" or "upgrade paths", and if you get a cool new item or skill, you can always equip it without any hassle or worry. The accessory system is taken directly from Final Fantasy's past, and it's a really smart RPG design. JRPG real-world crossover BioShock has tape recordings to tell its back-story, Crisis Core has twitter. Actually, it's not twitter, but something similar: Japanese cell-phone emails. Email in Japan is a cell-phone oriented medium, and as luck would have it, that makes it a good vehicle to tell game back-story. Why? When you're emailing on a cell-phone screen, you keep it pithy! Throughout Crisis Core, you receive one or two paragraph emails from people, corporations, your bosses, just like you would expect in real life. In addition to cell-phone emails, you can also get cell-phone calls from like your boss telling you to come back to the office or go on a mission or whatever. How useful is that as a game design idea? Quite useful. This is like in FF8 where you had a job so you had a salary to buy stuff with. JRPG cartoony stories Crisis Core has many classic voice acted scenes. In one, a man yells "What does an angel dream of!?" In another, after the main character passes out, a woman's voice says "Helloooo", to which the main character responds "Mom?" and this repeats 3 times. JRPG as slot-machine Crisis core makes leveling up and skilling up dependent on a slot machine. You know what's interesting about slot machines? They're rigged. That's smart because then there's no digging around menus to see your progress, and you just end up not caring about that stuff too much. JRPG as casual game The JRPG isn't the ultimate genre, but it is a nice low effort amusement, much like the modern casual game.

The story is really goofy, but I find it interesting because I want to see how it ties into FF7. Does that make me sound like an idiot? There was just a lot of strange stuff in FF7, and the CC story is centered around that stuff. I've also heard that Crisis Core has a really good ending. The battle system is fun. Everything is designed so that you can dodge attacks if you wait until the last second, and there is a good variety of attacks and abilities to choose from. For instance, in the classic magic spells, fire is a homing missile, lightning is a laser of damage, and blizzard is an area of effect spell, so in practice they're used for different things. I see a few problems with the game. Sometimes the missions can be too simple and sometimes the environments are really boring, but these problems seem to decrease as the game progresses. If you are a big FF fan, this game is very much in the style of Final Fantasy in pretty much every way, so I would guess that you would enjoy it.

Yeah, 6 years old might be too old to overhaul. I will say that the Radeon HD4670 runs on my 400w dell power supply, and without the second power attachment that a lot of new cards need.

What are your computer's specs? You might be able to do well, considering that a lot of PC games are also on consoles and that tech is years old now as well. Why did I turn to PC gaming? I didn't have a tv for the past year...

I love the history in Chrome. I used to set my timesheets at work according to them. Control+h, everything's laid out there real nice. Problem is, Chrome really sucks at loading images for me. It will bomb half the images on a site and take 30 seconds longer than firefox to load. Also it doesn't have firebug.

Good idea for a thread. Youtube is one of the best means of forum communication.

To the people that say PC gaming is expensive: I bought a Radeon 4670 for $80. I bought Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, Far Cry 2, Tomb Raider, Fallout 3 and Orange Box on steam for $20 each, and the Relic superpack for like $40.

I just reached the second area/country, and I was like "WHAT!?" How long is this game?

Well done Jake, that was a really interesting discussion about finishing games. When I was little, I didn't finish any games at all, which made me feel like a jerk. It's interesting, some of the only games that I finished growing up were JRPGs. It's like JRPGs were the first genre that said, "we should make it so the player can finish the game, even if they aren't super skilled or dedicated." I think people are really grateful for that. Now that most games can be beaten by normal people, the big problem is the "padding out the game" problem, where they put 3 times more content in than the mechanics justify, to appease gamers who want "value for their money." I hate those "value for money" people.

Did you ever take the bus? There's usually a civilian car at the bus stop, sometimes a nice dune buggy. So you guys would swim for like 5 mile distances? Lol, wtf

I agree. I swim in random ponds for no reason, just because the swimming is so well done. You also go surprisingly fast while swimming.

You aren't supposed to kill a lot of soldiers as you sneak into the camp, especially if the camp has like 20+ soldiers in it: there's too much risk that a second guard will hear or see something. The reason you skirt around the outside of the camp is to find a path with good cover so no one will notice you. I try to do all my missions stealthily and I often only kill a few guards start to finish. I actually think the far cry 2 enemies aren't too bad in terms of seeing you through bushes and stuff, since I can see them to about that degree if I'm really looking.

How did you guys get around in the game? I mainly used boats, buses and walking. At other times, I'd take the jeeps or the dune buggies off road to avoid patrols. Driving on the roads is the worst: you've got that engine noise blaring, you don't get to enjoy the scenery, it isn't particularly fun, and you're always getting attacked. With the other modes of transportation, I always feel like I can do something clever or interesting.

When I saw that video, I just wanted to shout, "NERDS!" Wasn't Mass Effect Bioware's first Next-Gen game? That's kind of crazy, since there's usually a big step up between the first and second game you do on a new console.

Cigol: I think Shepherd is handled in an interesting way, and the social interaction was on a whole new level for me because my character was so well portrayed. If you disagree, that's fine, I haven't played every great PC RPG yet, and I might agree with you if I'd played some game or another. In case you're wondering, Fallout 2 is my favorite RPG of all time.

I ran into this a little bit, and here's how it breaks down upper left - charisma upper right - sympathy/paragon left - backstory right - all business lower left - intimidation lower right - ball busting/lone wolf Going to the left too much turns shepherd into a nerd. Only choose left if you are genuinely interested in hearing backstory. Yeah, most of the paths end up with similar results, but the important thing for me is that my Shepherd is a believable character. I had a lot of fun with that. With Wrex, I'd be a hard-ass because he obviously likes that; I'd tease Liara and Kaidan because they are nerds; I'd be bff's with with Ashley; and I'd occasionally yell at/hang up on the council when they were being dumb. In other words, it's not the freedom to make "significant choices," it's about making social interaction more fun and more realistic.

I think we're arguing that Mass Effect did it a bit differently from those games. IE, you could shape the character, but the character also has an inherent personality and history that's separate from the player. In most games, the character is more of a blank slate. When I look at my Shepherd, I know she's gone through some bad times that I don't know about. Maybe that's because she's well voice acted, and most times the player character isn't voice acted in games like this. Never played planescape torment tho, so maybe that's similar.

Naked lady as main character makes me uncomfortable.

In other games, a dialog tree is more like a computer terminal that you run queries on to get info or complete a quest. In Mass Effect, you can bust people's balls, make jokes, lend a sympathetic ear, yell at people, etc. just for the fun of interacting with the other characters. Also, I agree with you DanJW, about how it solves all those player character problems: it solves the Grand Theft Auto problem.

I see HK-47 sized potential in this idea

I agree with Coldkill: I think Mass Effect was a groundbreaking game. I can't think of any RPG where the player character was so directly in the game world. I felt like I could shape the main character's personality in a cool way. I'd tease Liara for being a nerd, and I'd hit on Kaidan and watch him squirm, and have Ashley as my wing-man at all times because I thought she was the coolest character. I really enjoyed the interaction with these three characters in particular. I think a lot of people might have had less fun because Liara is such a nerd that it's no fun trying get romantically involved with her, but people just wanted to see the sex scene. Then the combat: I really enjoyed it. It had all the things I like about shooters, but slowed down to the point where I could understand what was going on. That's a really good, mainstreamed RPG combat system. I played Vanguard by the way, which may be the funnest combat class, so maybe other people didn't play the same fights that I did.

The thing is that a lot of the cut-scenes were spaceship stuff, and the engine was much better at rendering people than outer space stuff.

Anyone check out the Bioshock 2 official podcast? Episode 2 features Hot Scoops. 2 nice things I learned from listening: -More non-enemy NPCs to interact with in Bioshock 2 -You're not a big fat big daddy, but a slim plasmid-using big daddy Also, the Big Sister character seems intriguing.

By the way, there ARE a bunch of prerendered cutscenes in Mass Effect! They just aren't quite as flashy as I hoped, since I'm a Final Fantasy kinda guy.

That's a great quote. That seems very Japanese to me, and also awesome. Thanks for posting the interview!